


dig up my grave and save my body

by eggosandxmen



Series: the ghost in her machine [1]
Category: Beetlejuice (Cartoon 1989), Beetlejuice - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider, Strange Things in Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24101989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggosandxmen/pseuds/eggosandxmen
Summary: Lydia Deetz is something of an urban legend, even in her hometown.
Relationships: Claire Brewster & Lydia Deetz
Series: the ghost in her machine [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738951
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58





	dig up my grave and save my body

**Author's Note:**

> this series came about from me realizing that, canonically in the cartoonverse, beetlejuice is lydia's primary caretaker (due to the maitlands being non-existent and the deetzes being forgetful at best and neglectful at worst). i thought about how a child raised in the neitherworld would be affected in the overworld, and thus this came into being. lydia is... not quite human, not anymore. she's not quite Right. and she's going to take peaceful pines by storm.

Lydia Deetz is something of an urban legend, even in her hometown.

At the age of seventeen, most kids are getting ready for prom, worrying about finals, or hitting parties. Even the odd ones tend to play Dungeons and Dragons or something similar once in a while. But, according to her classmates, Lydia-- ever the loner-- can usually be found in the cemetery just off Hilltop Road, flicking a lighter (though never holding a cigarette) and taking pictures. When she was younger, twelve or thirteen, most of her classmates that dared to speak to her knew her as a strange but ultimately quite friendly kid. Now, though, she seemed to almost reclaim what they thought of her. They wanted her to be a witch, or a bitch, or both? Sure. She could do that.

She had begun taking odd little jobs around town at fifteen. Pretty much every longtime Peaceful Pines resident could remember when she tacked up her first poster on the school news board-- _STRUGGLING WITH SOMETHING UNUSUAL? CALL._ Nothing else on the paper. Not even a phone number. According to those who had taken her up on the offer, she’d just… known.

Claire Brewster had known Lydia Deetz since they were ten years old. They’d never gotten along-- well, that was something of an understatement, but nonetheless. Claire, despite all her hatred of Lydia, knew damn well that she’d be able to handle anything _weird_ without a second thought.

The party Claire had been at, a little gathering of the cheerleaders and football team in the woods, had gone wrong around one in the morning. Someone had brought out a ouija board, and they were all very drunk, and-- well-- what happened had happened.

So Claire and her five closest friends (friends wasn’t really the right term. Allies?) made the decision to go find their town’s resident goth on an early Friday afternoon. They knew, instinctively, that they wouldn’t have to look long.

Sure enough, Callie managed to find Lydia on the roof of a mausoleum in the town cemetery, the tails of her big jacket hanging off the gutter she’d managed to climb onto. She looked down at the six of them cooly, swinging her legs over the side of the mausoleum and leaning forward.

“You need something?”

The six of them-- Claire, Callie, Reyna, Heather, Gwen, and Gracie, the apex predators of their school, rarely scared of adults, never mind fellow students-- exchanged glances, suddenly speechless, and Heather not-so-subtly pushes Claire forward.

“We-- we think there’s a ghost in the woods.”

“A _ghost_?” Lydia says, her voice clearly patronizing. “ _Really_?”

“Shut up,” Claire snaps immediately, and Lydia grins crookedly, leaning forward on her elbows so she’s almost leering down at them. “It-- it threw our stuff everywhere, and--”

“You’ve got yourself a monster, and you want me to handle it?” Lydia blows her bangs out of her face, clearly bored already. “No, thanks. Your ghost. Your problem.”

“We’ll pay,” Gracie pipes up. “How much do you want?”

Lydia considers her. “Sixteen dollars an hour. If I get hurt, it’s an extra thirty, and if my equipment gets wrecked, you’re liable for it.”

“Deal,” Claire replies without even thinking, and Lydia jumps off the mausoleum, raising an eyebrow before reaching out her hand for Claire to shake.

Her nails are purplish, and her skin is almost translucent. Her eyes are yellowing. Her teeth are sharp. It is obvious that Lydia Deetz is not a human being; at least, not anymore.

Claire suddenly feels as if her automatic response-- to make a deal-- might mean something More, as Lydia lets go of her grip and salutes before walking down one of the dirt paths among the graves, seeming to disappear in the shadow.

When Claire and her friends arrive in the woods, Lydia’s already there, sitting on a log and watching them warily. 

“It’s, uh, down the path--” Reyna starts, but Lydia lifts up her hand, effectively silencing the other girl.

“I know where it is. I just knew that you’d never go without me.” Lydia stands up, adjusting her jacket before grinning sharply. “You need a Guide.” 

No one quite knows how to respond to that, so they simply fall in line, walking behind Lydia. The girl doesn’t look at them, pulling various things out of her pockets-- a deck of tarot cards, a few rocks and dried plants, and at one point Claire could swear she sees a live snake-- as they go, muttering to herself.

When they reach the campsite, Lydia surveys it for a moment before sighing through her teeth.

“Poltergeist.”

“Huh?”

Lydia gives Claire a sideways glance, sticking her hands deep into her pockets. “It’s a poltergeist. Low-level, presumably, but seeing as it can affect the living world, you obviously did something really fucking stupid.” 

“Who died and made you the expert on this shit?”

Lydia gives Claire a Look, then, and Claire feels compelled to keep her mouth firmly shut.

“Everyone start looking around the campsite.” At the six confused looks she gets, Lydia laughs, the sound harsh against the quiet woods. “What, did you think you wouldn’t have to do anything? These things go faster with multiple people. We have to find the object tying the poltergeist to this dimension, and it’s going to take me forever to search the site by myself. Once we find it, you’re all free to leave.”

Seemingly resigned to it, Claire’s friends start half heartedly poking around, Claire joining them after a few seconds of glaring poisonously at Lydia, who moves toward the center of the site and pulls a stick from out of nowhere to begin pushing aside old beer cans and solo cups.

To fill the silence, Heather immediately starts bickering with Gracie over her outfit, and the resulting fight has Lydia staring at them in utter confusion, blinking off shock when Claire asks what the fuck her problem is.

“My family’s pretty tight-knit,” she replies after a few seconds. “Not used to seeing fights.”

That’s not true and Claire knows it. Charles and Delia Deetz fight nigh-constantly, and everyone at school knows it. However, everyone at school also knows that rarely, if ever, is Lydia around the Deetz house. Claire’s got no idea where she goes all the time, and something in the way Lydia is currently holding herself discourages Claire from asking.

“Well, we’re not family,” Claire sneers instead. “We’re friends. I assume you don’t have many of those.”

“You’ve got no idea,” Lydia says, rather cheerfully, and continues poking around.

The group remains painfully silent until Gwen screams, holding up a half-cracked mirror in victory. “Is this it?”

Lydia runs over and all but tackles her, wrestling the mirror out of her hand and chucking it back on the ground.

“You weren’t supposed to touch it! Manifestation varies, but touching the power object never results in anything—“

She’s cut off by a bright light as the logs and various trash around the campsite begins to lift slowly off the ground, glowing brightly.

“Good,” Lydia finishes, as the light blinds them fully for a few terrifying moments until the various floating objects begin to circle them in what Claire can only describe as a tornado. 

In front of the seven of them, a figure begins to manifest. His skin is Lydia’s color, eyes sunken in like hers and teeth yellowed, but he can’t be older than twelve.

A preteenage poltergeist. 

He screeches, and without any hesitation Lydia pushes all six other girls out of the whirlwind, leaving them dizzy and confused and unable to see anything. There’s a conversation going now, barely audible despite both of them clearly screaming to be heard, and when the tornado comes to a summon halt, dropping trash and cracking wood on the ground, the ghost has not disappeared.

“It _hurt_!” he screams, hands balled into fists. “Lydia, they hurt me!”

“I know!” Lydia says back, hands in the air like she’s trying to calm him down. “I’m sorry, buddy. We’re going to get you home safe and you’re never going to have to see them again.”

“Mr. Shoggoth says that breathers—“

“Beetlejuice is a _moron_ ,” Lydia says, cutting him off. “I’m a breather, right? I used to make mistakes like they did. Do I deserve to get my head whacked off with a piece of wood?”

His expression drops from one of anger to one of worry. “No!”

“You want me running around with a jack-o-lantern keeping my brain in place?” Lydia asks, like it's some long-running joke, half a smile on her face.

“That’d be pretty funny,” the ghost boy giggles, floating a few inches closer to the ground. “You’d make a good headless horseman.”

“Don’t I know it,” Lydia says, smiling, as she moves towards him and swings him up so she’s balancing him on her hip. “Alright, we’re getting you home, and I fully expect your mother to attempt to exorcise you, so I’ll come around for dinner, just to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

The kid nods, burying his face in Lydia’s shoulder, and Lydia pulls a piece of broken chalk out of her pocket, drawing a messy rectangle on the trunk of the nearest tree and knocking on it three times.

A greenish glow illuminates Claire and her friend’s faces as the trunk _opens from the inside,_ Lydia letting the boy wriggle down and rush through the tree, waving behind him.

“Don’t do anything dumb!” she yells after him, before slamming the tree trunk shut (leaving it looking completely normal) and dusting off her hands, sticking the chalk away once again.

“I want my money on my desk in homeroom by Friday,” Lydia tells them casually. “Thirty-two dollars.”

She pulls something else— some sort of oil?— out of yet another pocket and pours some on her hand, drawing the oil in a line across each other girl’s forehead like some kind of baptism (to their disgust).

“You won’t quite remember what happened here, but you’ll know enough.”

Claire blinks, and when she comes back to herself, more than a little disoriented, Lydia’s already strolling down the dirt path back to town, hands stuffed in her jacket’s pockets and a hat set at an angle on her head. When she looks back, whistling, to salute sarcastically at them, Claire finds the hat says GUIDE in dirty old letters.

“What the fuck is going on with _her_?” Gracie asks under her breath, and Claire shrugs.

She’s not sure, but she does intend to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> this series is going to be a collection of drabbles, and requests, questions, and ideas are taken gladly in the comments!! thank you for reading. comments make my day.


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